Oh My Dear Paleo: What am I going to do with you?

In spite of those who make fun of me—including myself—I’m immeasurably better off now than in May of 2007 when I set off on this path incrementally. With blood pressure at 160/100, 80 pounds overfat, congested, sneezy, and itchy constantly, I have had a new life for a while. For years.

Perhaps it’s the case that upon getting 60 of those fat pounds off, normalizing blood pressure, dumping medications and beginning to really enjoy life again that I backed off without getting to the “finish line.”

But whose “finish line?” The truth is, I’d like to be better, look better, etc., but I also have no real interest in turning all of this into a display. …My book is criticized as well. It’s been called “turgid.” And a young girl with next to no life experience—with a largely anonymous blog devoted to her deeply felt need of catharsis—at 26—called it “cheap.” That’s because it wasn’t devoted to me, or even the larger Paleo crowd in general…but to those you love; and I will never, ever waver from that. I’ve recently released a series of 12 videos for the exact same reason: those you love. Check ’em out, because it’s going to be the most effective thing out there for the most of those you love.

Everyone wants to be a rain maker, to engage in the fight for dominance over the mantle of Paleo Authority. Me? Not interested, and never have been. Readers come and go through a revolving door, and thanks to “Godgle” and a lot of daily work over almost 10 years, I have deep archives, lots of links to it…and so Godgle shines his powerful light on me, and thousands of naives get the opportunity of a Paleo introduction every day of the year without me lifting a finger. In my sleep (10 hours of that, Monday night). Thousands. Every fucking day.

So go fuck yourselves. You can’t do anything about it.

You know what else? A huge portion of that traffic is from hits, visits, searches that have not a thing in the world to do with Paleo—while new bloggers feverishly get up new posts on Paleo every day. I’ll beat you every time. Do you know why? Because I blog about life. I blog about real life—all of it and nothing is ever off limits—and I’m not only not afraid, but embrace the idea of blogging in a wide context, pushing every single boundary I can imagine. About anything, and everything, that strikes my fancy, at any given moment. An entire post that pisses tons of people off is often conceived of in seconds. And an hour or so later, it’s real—and nobody I know of in the Paleosphere does it. Not a one.

What does that tell you?

Fear?

Yep, that’s what it tells me. But I’ve been rewarded. I have, by leaps and bounds, fars and wides, the most sensible, astute, intellectual, smart—and the list goes on—commenters in the entire realm. Hell, I even have religious people, smart enough to be working on the Paleo atheism they were born into. It’s a work in progress. …It’s hard to give up a master who promises you gold, even though you don’t get it until you’re dead.

PALEO is a framework, a principle. It’s a set of ideas, rules, guidelines…a foundation…by which you… By which you… Now… get this because I’m only going to write it this one time: Paleo is a DEFENSE. It is not, nor has it ever been anything more than that. It’s not an offense. It’s not a diet. It’s not a prescription. It’s not low carb. It’s not high carb. It’s not a club (in any sense). It’s a foundation.

What is Paleo? It’s the best real food your animal ass can source at any time, combined with your cost, just like any hunter. Fuck grassfed if the cost & trouble vs. benefit doesn’t work well for you. Any hunter would tell you that.

Grassfed? Fuck grassfed; it’s not Paleo either, because there were no domesticated animals in the Paleolithic. You want Paleo? Then anything you and yours doesn’t kill wild IS NOT PALEO. So how far do you want to go?

…Or, how about taking Paleo for what it is, to us? The best you can source of real food, anywhere on the globe and at any time, including the 24/7 darkness of nether regions. Cook it yourself? Optimal? Who the fuck knows? And who the fuck cares? And fuck all who raise stupid questions! How about that?

You know what? Fuck the safe starch debate. Eat starch if it works for you. Eat zero some days, moderate others, pig out now and then. And how about that? Did you get married to a scale, or another human being?

I am getting tired of the LC debate over this. CAPS: FUCKING FALSIFICATION. PLENTY OF HEALTHY POPULATIONS EAT VERY HIGH CARBS. SHUT THE FUCK UP! Just shut the fuck up, please.

And I must say this, too. I’m getting weary of Jimmy Moore. Most offensive to me? He uses LC in loaded word terms, which I have always hated, but have always given a pass. We make fun of “hearthealthywholegrains,” but when do you not see/hear/read Jimmy NOT using “healthylowcarblifestyle” in his writings and on his podcasts like a meme (I have unsubscribed, and no longer listen to them)? I appreciate Jimmy and I know he has helped a lot of people and will continue to do so; and he has helped me and I hope my years of defense of him count for something. But it’s kinda time for us to go our separate ways and I will wish him well. I just think our goals have reached the point of non-compatibility. It’s OK; it happens. I will still hope he helps people and I know he will. I have no desire to see him lose earned capital.

Do you get it? I don’t need to wish him ill. In fact, I can wish him well while at the same time, I have my own gig and it’s gonna be that. Get it. Get it, ELMM & Co.?

In fact, I can actually thank Jimmy for bringing this to a head, because that’s always best. He clearly wants Paleo to be very aligned with a dietary regime that cuts out about 1/3 of what it took our species to survive. OK, I get the metabolic derangement and the need for some people to use that as a body hack. Yes, VLC is, to me, a body hack and it’s very, very far from substantiated that it’s an optimal version of Paleo for most.

I actually love how this has broken open and is getting wider, with more and more diverse groups. I intend to cater to all, have them call each other cunts, cocksuckers, bitches and mutherfuckers in comments. Maybe we’ll get somewhere. Bring it all on. This is the one place you can actually, really, really, learn from one another.

No agenda. Could’ve written a long para, but if you don’t get that two-word sentence, then you’re not ready for the wild world of Free the Animal Comments. Does anyone really guess that’ll be worse than “The 10 Things X” putrid diseased jism everyone laps up everyday like dogs to their vomit?

Paleo: equator to arctic, sea level to 16,000 feet, everything in-between. …and if while in the tundra of Northern Canada at night in January (which is 24/7 anyway) and you can drink Fijian coconut water from young greens cut the day prior? High five!

But it’s not Paleo. Do you get it?

Update: OK, moving from rant to productive and positive, this, just published:

Shit(!) I wrote the following comment on your previous post titled “Fun Shit I Saw in the Last 24 Hours of My Life,” but that was a comment in response to one of your comments. Sorry for the double post, but my response is more relevant to this post in general.

You have a very mature attitude, Richard, and for most, this type of attitude is prevalent at FTA. I first viewed FTA back in November 2008. In fact, it was on Thanksgiving day. What I saw was different interpretations of paleo, ancestral health… choose your language. For some, it seems to mean an X number of carbs per day, while others like myself, are hypersensitive to carbohydrates, even in the form of vegetables, which is why I choose to not eat as many vegetables as, say, Art DeVany, and his wife. Mainly what I saw was a lot of people who felt duped by the government pyramid scheme, thus was made obvious with pissed off attitudes. What was refreshing is, that even though there were, and are different camps of thought about paleo, we all for the most part are independent thinkers, and take what we need in order to fulfill our own individual desires. Never will you see me disparage another individual for eating potatoes, yams, or white rice. If it works for them, then it works for them; simple as that. Who in hell am I to tell another person what to eat in order to claim a piece of group action? By the same token, when others tell me what to eat, or how to exercise in a doctrinaire manner, they will get a monstrous “Fuck You(!) emanating from my bellowing lungs. (And yes, I’m talking about so-called paleo folks, as well as the evangelical vegans, and vegetarians.

Is my view simplistic in thinking? You bet your fifty-two year young ass it is! And there is nothing wrong with that, because it works… for me as well as others.

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Hi Richard. Long time lurker and I never really contribute in the comments, but I want to commend you on this. I thought maybe that you had gone completely bat shit insane over the course of the last few months and I had started to lose interest but now in hindsight it looks like it all lead up to this. An evolved Richard. The new and improved. Still an asshole, but an enlightened one with no more attachments to hold him back. Free to be and choose under nothing elses shadow. Out in the bright sunlight. :)

Cheers!

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“Yes, VLC is, to me, a body hack and it’s very, very far from substantiated that it’s an optimal version of Paleo for most.”

Kurt Harris described LC as therapeutic or something similar a while back, which I find to be an important distinction. Antibiotics are amazingly therapeutic when the body is being overwhelmed by a nasty bacteria, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to take them every day for the rest of your life. What’s the difference between therapeutic and optimal re: safe starches? Well, there’s the rub, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit for the answer.

Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Is it really all that complicated?

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“Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Is it really all that complicated?”

Let me help:

Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Use the word cunt at least twice daily in any context that puts you at some degree of social risk, which naturally involves young neo-feminists who are only neo because they don’t care about repeating failed history. Use cocksuker, mutherfucker, pussy, etc. liberally, with little regard to context, unless your’re dealing with a little young male hipsters who’re envious of not having a pussy instead– they might sick their “bear” friends on you. Is it really all that complicated?

Nice. Very nice. You ought to write about that, heavy on anecdotes of how the regurgitated shit you were hearing from fellow kinds and school teachers had no congruence with what you were hearing from your dad.

Does anyone suppose that everyone gathered around the Paleo campfire ate the same proportions of stuff from the day’s haul? Did everyone like to suck the marrow out of the bones, or go straight for the fatty bits on the ends of the ribs? Did they all jump for joy when the tubers were ready and have seconds, or did some take half a potarto and sneak some dried elk they’d been saving from the day before? Yeah, there was probably a general context to our nutrient intake depending on environment, but I don’t suppose people were any less individual in their likes and dislikes, at least in times of plenty. Starvation will likely make you forget you ever heard about “nutritional ketosis”.

” The best you can source of real food, anywhere on the globe and at any time…”

Thank you! We do the best we can, and make “the best we can” a priority, even if it’s not optimal, pure paleo, your message to me personally and as the protector of my family, is, “Try Harder”. It works better than doing nothing, so Thank You! and Fuck your detractors!

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I am up here in Canada,and it’s hard to eat CaliforniaPaleo style like all the pretty people with nice teeth do on their blogs. You were the first guy I read after a friend gave me a copy of wheat belly.
Needless to say ,never felt better,and I enjoy your comments .

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It’s a damn good question Ryan. I have a book in the works already in connection with something completely different, but absolutely, my next book for this audience will be about the social–the religion, the politics, all of it.

Jimmy Moore was useful to you when he was promoting you and vice versa. You disagree with him? Yeah, not so much. I read you for entertainment, not for knowledge. Don’t fall into the Charles Washington I HAVE DISCOVERED THE TRUTH THEREFORE I AM A GURU WHOM ALL MUST OBEY trap (he and Jimmy had some EPIC arguments a few years ago and ended up banning each other from each other’s site). You’re one source, not THE source.

/internet = reading junkie’s China White

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Go fuck off, cunt. You don’t really have a brain or an ounce of honesty, but if you did, you’d know that I have never really gone after anyone in the wider community as others do, and that was longstanding. My foray into Kruse was my one and only departure. A foray I regret.

Oooh, you told me. Should I go away and cry now or just flip you off and call you a thin-skinned “truth hurts” cunt? Decisions, decisions.

And stop with the “I could barely stand you” shit because I haven’t commented here enough for you to make that decision. I didn’t even call you on Jack Kruse because I knew eventually you’d see though his bullshit and the comment I made on your JACK KRUSE IS A BIG EFFING LIAR was about … Jimmy Moore, who has always been a big fucking liar because his livelihood depends on site hits and low-carb frankenfood ad sales. Again, you are A voice, not THE voice.

“Should I go away and cry now or just flip you off and call you a thin-skinned “truth hurts” cunt? Decisions, decisions.”

I don’t should people.

Do whatever the fuck you want, Trish. If you like it here, do what you want. If you hate it here, do what you want. If you want to blow your brains out, I have offered loaded guns for that purpose to two others in my life. In other words, do whatever the fuck you want.

I will do likewise. Do you fuckimg understand? Can I make it any fucking clearer?

Nah, don’t want to blow my brains out. I have it on good authority that it’s hard to scrub that shit off walls, but money can be made if you’re willing to do it.

To quote a meme of a grotesquely made-up Heath Ledger that’s been floating around a few years, not sure if serious. I like your food porn, most times I agree with you about stuff, sometimes I don’t. I just don’t post every time that, as the kids say, you get me in the feels, good or bad.

Although it’s my belief that Jimmy Moore, at least at this stage of the game, is motivated more by the palm of his hand than anything else, he does share a trait that is very common to chronically overweight people–desperation. I haunt a fairly conventional low carb board, and any time there’s a tweak–eat more fat! Have coconut milk! Use HCG! Eat low calorie one day and high calorie the next! Fast! Just eat meat and eggs!–the bandwagon gets jumped on so hard it bounces, people hoping that this is the ONE THING that will get them thin once and for all. With Jimmy right now it’s “nutritional ketosis,” but he boasts that he can still eat chocolate, which is reminiscent of an alcoholic boasting “hey, one beer won’t hurt!”

I’m sure you have something important to say, but I’ll be damn if I can figure out what it is most of the time. Maybe that’s intentional. Since I only read your ravings on rare occasions, I don’t have all the context needed to grok your beef with Jimmy Moore (among other things). Yeah, he’s got seriously damaged physiology, so he emphasizes LC and ketosis, Certainly JM, Richard Bernstein, Andreas Eenfeldt, and Steve Phinney will die any day from a massive starch and sourdough deficiency. Where’s the big tent that includes everyone who’s attempting to eat real food? Not everyone would survive in Kitava. Me included.

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“PALEO is a framework, a principle. It’s a set of ideas, rules, guidelines…a foundation…by which you… By which you… Now… get this because I’m only going to write it this one time: Paleo is a DEFENSE. It is not, nor has it ever been anything more than that. It’s not an offense. It’s not a diet. It’s not a prescription. It’s not low carb. It’s not high carb. It’s not a club (in any sense). It’s a foundation.”

A-fuckin-men!

People want to be spoonfed. That’s a huge problem. They want to go to Sisson’s site or someone else’s and be told exactly what to eat and when to eat it. Is this or that safe? etc, etc.. Instead of just taking their own lives–into their own hands–and figuring out what works for them after they’ve established a working template. It’s really that simple.

I’ve said it before, but I hate all the coined phrases for a REAL FOOD lifestyle. I know it’s a necessary evil, but it’s so confining to label it anything other than real food.

What really gets me about that whole scene is the idea that you only get to eat carbs if you are a competitive athlete.

Hey I’m sorry that I got old, I’m sorry that I gained 60 pounds of excess weight in middle age (which I lost), I’m sorry that despite four years of constant, unrelenting effort I cannot be a competitive athlete, I’m sorry that I am slow as molasses compared to my younger self, I’m sorry that I pushed myself so hard for so long that something had to give, but please, pretty please, can I eat some rice?

Or some gruel? Even Charles Dickens gave his waifs some gruel.
,
I think Moore has a good message when you are obese as all get out, but at some point it ceases to be the right message.

Do you see it as a journey

A>B

Or do you see it as a journey

A>B>C>D>E>F

At some point you have to take stock and decide what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

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I suspect that for most moderate cycling of carbs via white rice & starchy veg will be like metabolic exercise.

Perhaps vl or zero is right or optimal or even preferable for some, but I think they are a very tiny minority in the large scope of things.

I also think the problem is this very weird (to me) notion that you have to have some daily macro ratio. That ought to be laughed away right off the bat. Some days you eat zero carbs, some high carbs, some in between.

I have one rule. I eat real food. Nothing from a can, box, or package. I feel great. I don’t count carbs or any of that crazy shit. I generally avoid wheat most of the time. On Sunday I did indulge though. In San Diego there is a bakery called Bread & Cie. They make a baguette that is out of this world. I ate half a loaf with generous gobs of Kerry Gold Irish butter and 3 glasses of cabernet. I don’t eat this every day or even once a week, only sometimes. Life is short, enjoy it and be happy!

The pic actually has a more of a dried ham, like prosciutto. The classic is jambon Blanche, which is a cooked ham, but not cured or smoked. Some delis have it and in fact, there is a Canadian company that makes it under the trade name jambon, I believe. It is very different from smoked or cured ham and goes so excellent with unsalted butter.

Just want to to say that I completely respect where you are coming from. I think you got it DEAD ON in this post. I guess I’m just so confused. Why is it that people read something from some guru on the internet and think that it somehow becomes part of some doctrine or dogma before they’ve even ATTEMPTED to impliment it into their lives. You will find folks that will fight you to the death over low carb being the only true and righteous path even though they’ve never seen a bodyfat percentage lower than 20%. Yes, folks that are “metabolically deranged” would benefit from cutting the carbs, but you know what else they would benefit from? Not eating shit. Eat real, whole foods. Get your ass moving and pick up heavy shit on a frequent basis. “Your carbs aren’t low enough” is always the right answer. I love the line “Paleo is a framework, a principle” because it is spot on. No one is right or wrong, and yet everybody is. We have to be smart enough to take what we gather online and put it into practice in our lives. Keep what works, scrap what doesn’t. And I will sure as shit not leave my fate in the hands of someone who has never nor will ever meet me.

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For me, an important step was realizing that I don’t eat “at dinner time” any more. I eat when I am hungry, and then I eat whatever I can find (having done my homework so that my hunt minimizes poisons in my environment). This was the lesson that fasting taught me (and continues to teach: I think by this point it may even have resulted in more quantifiable impact on my phenotype than even giving up wheat).

Joseph, as I was walking the dogs this morning when that post was about 90% done I was wondering how to go forward and one thing that hit me, that I’ve always used myself, is that in any situation, be it a party, traveling, whatever, where your choices are limited to a menu, always remember that a fast is one of your choices. Or, maybe you have been fasting, or you’re just plain hungry, or you’re ready for an indulgence. Then you just make a choice, hopefully not the worst one and hopefully, a decent one even if not the best you could do at that particular moment.

Am I knocking at your door, cuntface? No. What the fuck are you doing someplace you find to be beneath your standards?

Who’s going to win? Am I going to continue to advance, collecting one mind at a time and discarding rejects such as yourself, or do you think you’re going to dominate me into some sort of submission to your will?

Huh, “reallife”.

I’ll put my real life up against yours any day. I’d never spend a fraction of a secnd in any blog I didn’t like. I get links every day. Done. In a fraction of a second–unless there’s a blog post in it. Oh….yea, you don’t do that, do you?

With that said, there have been a lot of posts over the last, oh, two-three months or so that have been “led up to.” Clearly you’re going through a great period of transition, and, if I may say so, it all seemed to start shortly after the death of your friend George Knott. It strikes me that you have been re-evaluating your values, work, and social circumstances after that tragic event. Kudos to you for the effort, and my condolences for what seems to have started the ball rolling.

Personally, I’m not one for throwing around the Fs and Cs all that much. Never have been. An inheritance from my upbringing. And I’m more of a sit-back-and-ponder guy than a grab-the-asshole’s-balls-through-the-monitor type. We all assert individuality in different ways. The key is the manner of consciousness, not the external manifestation. But a person with the right mindset can see through the external manifestations – his own and others’ – and identify where the objective mindset is present. So although we don’t share habits, I get it. The desire to match in the externals is one of the grossest forms of collectivism.

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Props Gordon. It was my cousin. My surrogate big brother if you will. I still can’t even completely, totally, get over the weird fantasy that it not really real, which it is, gone forever, fact.

Thank you. Though a burden, I doubt it’s as much about that as other factors and changing attitudes. That said, good as any and really, I always want to grow more, learn more, understand more and if luckiest of all, convey it more and have it reflected back by the most perceptive commenters in paleo.

I love the paleo community for a lot of reasons, but I suppose most of all is that they already have a reasonable foundation and it goes way beyond diet, which is why ai often blog way beyond diet.

And it occurred to me, while reading your response, that perhaps your “rhetoric” is so “violent” lately because of the increasingly collectivism, weakness, religiosity, second-handedness, and ritualism that has crept into the paleo movement. It’s not what it was, even when I first found out about it in 2010. We have paleo 2.0, LC paleo, HC paleo, etc etc. I can’t even be bothered writing all the BS versions of paleo out there. This should have all been settled last year when this came up – paleo’s a framework, not a prescription.

That’s the shit we all fucking need to realize. The world is full of worthless troll cunts who only seek cult of personality status so rocking the boat is unimaginable. Free the animal and free the mind from meaningless drivel.

Rock on bro… Cool video series, very informative shit!

Nothing beats a single malt…..nothing

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“Paleo” is a convenient label to call a set of principles and guidelines that focus on reducing/eliminating dietary poisons while increasing nutritional balance using evolutionary theories for guidance. As you say, it’s a way of thinking. It’s a mental approach to finding the most optimal health you can, given the actual body you possess, the resources you have available and the information you can access.

Typically brilliant Richard, always compelling and always challenging.
Your blog is the abbatoir where many of my former sacred cows have perished, and I can’t thank you enough for that.
Keep living your life Sir, you’re doing a damn fine job of it.
Cheers!

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What’s more I’m taking up smoking… haven’t you heard of the Kitavans!?! Doesn’t seem to bother them! This is the first [and last] blog post of yours I’ve ever read. So many paleo and low carb blogs have links here. I thought I’d check it out. LOL! I think you’ll find the paleo model from witch to draw hypotheses was necessary. And that just some credential- less dude hacking around in the dark is hardly worth listening to. [N=1 only matters if you are the 1] Good luck though!

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I’m not anti science at all Shareef and in fact, support the quest for some handle on optimality. My guess is that it lies somewhere in the middle, not either extremes of high carb or ketogentic. As for the Kitavans, one must realize that they have always lived in a natural food environment. Probably makes an epigentetic difference.

The context you are missing is that I’ve grown weary of seeing paleo promoted as a brand rather than as a framework of thinking whereby people can use it to think about the choices they have available to them.

At any rate, I plan on having a new post up later today explaining that in more depth, and in a positive direction rather than a rant. Just in case you want to check it out.

oh my imaginary god. it’s about time someone wrote this. i’m so glad it was you. it’s a lot funner to read it in your voice instead of the constant chatter of my own in my head saying “jesus christ, people are stupid and dependent and lazy thinkers.” thanks for the hot beef injections of sanity!

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Fucking hilarious. You could replace “paleo” with “agile”, change the surrounding context from nutrition/diet/eating to software development, and I have 10 friends who’ve written the same article. It’s just the same bullshit everywhere all the time.

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You DO have the smartest commentors in the paleosphere, and more often than not, they present very coherent arguments. I’m going to take a risk and not wait until my thoughts are coherent, because that will take a few days and more time than I can give this week. Here goes:

So I’ve read diversely on this Modern Internet, and lately, I’ve been reading more people who have abandoned Paleo because it “didn’t work for them … ” the post-Paleos, if you will (specifically, Cheeseslave, Rob at 180degreehealth, etc.). They are the anecdotal face of what happens if Paleo goes the way of other fad diets. According to them, it stops working, its tenets are dumb, it makes their health worse over time, etc. I, for one, believe them. I think generally individuals are their own best witness to their own experience. In other words, it’s not because they were “doing it wrong” that their experiments in Paleo failed. There are many anecdotes (myself included) of people who start with typical low-carb Paleo, who after X months feel worse, or find that some biomarkers have gotten worse. (Could be we’re using the wrong biomarkers. Knowledge is always incomplete. A hundred years from now, we’ll probably be using different markers.) ANYWAY, so these people have problems on low-carb paleo; it seems to shoot out their adrenals, their thyroid (documented extensively on 180degreehealth). I think for many of these people, some starches and sugars and salts are not only “safe,” but necessary. I, for one, am not willing to go back to pasta. I am perfectly happy to eat dense carbs (potatoes, perhaps rice) at every meal.

Maybe what we have here is two endocrine models: The diabetic/insulin resistant model, and the thyroid/adrenal model. The first should minimize carbs, the second should maximize carbs. There’s been a TON more research on the first model, and very little done on the second model. Somebody should get on that.

This ties into other lingering mysteries of evolution and modern applications. We have NO DISCUSSION of regional eating. I have basically east European ancestry … I’m guessing root vegetables were staples for my ancestors. Should I be OD-ing on coconut oil? Another: Why are our attractions to salty and sweet SO STRONG, if we were not meant to occasionally feed our bodies with those things? (This is not “weakness” talking here. I can drink my coffee black, go without fruit and chocolate. But I think going without fruit harms me, so I don’t do it.) It’s rare in our mainstream food culture, but there’s probably also such thing as too many nutrients. Why are there so many anecdotes of perfectly self-disciplined Paleo women who find meat and vegetables repulse them when they are pregnant and the only thing they crave is boxed Mac ‘n’ Cheese? Why the fuck would her hormones do that to her?

We didn’t stop inventing good things after we invented cooked food and bone broth and cod liver oil, we continue to invent. And now we have an abundance of invention, and we are experimenting with inventions of limitation, a.k.a. diets, limiting this food or that.

That’s all I’ve got for now.

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“We didn’t stop inventing good things after we invented cooked food and bone broth and cod liver oil, we continue to invent.”

Oooh yes. Like 70+% “unadulterated” dark chocolate! I want those guys that make it to start adding loads of whey protein to it (so I won’t have to make it myself, it sucks). And then my diet will rule at last. :D

One more idea to add to the insulin resistance v. adrenal/thyroid theory, IMO, is gut microbiome balance. How much of our inability to heal despite nutrient dense foods is lacking the proper organisms for digestion and absorption? How much do elimination diets inadvertently ‘starve’ out organisms we are already running low on? How to get those damned buggers to recolonize our gut even after supplementing probiotics, fermented foods, or braving fecal transplant (I wish there were more positive reports on that modality; other than healing C. diff., it still seems hit and miss). Going off tangent. Nice post, Richard. Important to keep thinking hard about this stuff.

Hey Richard, long time reader (via BoingBoing’s no-soap link HA! how many of us are still hanging around), very occasional time commenter.

I’ve been meaning to pass along to you for a few months now, because I know you in particular would appreciate it; have just waiting for an appropriate segue. One word for all the “Paleo” == low carb pedants out there: amylase

Or, as Wikipedia purportedly quotes American Scientist, “The salivary amylase levels found in the human lineage are six to eight times higher in humans than in chimpanzees, which are mostly fruit eaters and ingest little starch relative to humans.” OK, I dunno — maybe it’s the result of recent selection — but neither do the pedants. ;-)

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First, still have not used a drop of soap or shampoo ever since that way back, except on hands when I prep food.

Yep, very good thinking an well known in paleo circles. How could we produce that starch dealing substance had we not had to eat starch to survive the human migration to every nook and cranny of the globe except the extreme poles?

I’m curious why you haven’t been able to lose your remaining fatness. Too many calories? Maybe the diet is right and normal people would lose the weight but you’ve get mental food issues that drive you to compulsively eat.

Are you saying some extra chubbiness around the belly is healthy as long as your are eating real foods?

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Richard, I had a similiar awakening when a friend asked what was I ‘doing’ as health and looks were improving. I said Paleo woe, just to keep it simple. I was confronted with comments like I’m not true paleo because im not vlc etc etc. I have since abandoned any label. I eat what helps me attain my goals.

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Sound article, Niko! I have long been in criticism of “the paleo diet”, whatever that actually might be, for being a somewhat regional, if not anachronistic human diet. Of course it’s anachronistic, it’s paleo, duh! But what I mean is, it doesn’t take into account modern adaptions, and there are many.

No we’ve spread over the globe, we have adapted. It will take an evolvement to get us to eat the kind of garbage that modern “food” companies try to shove down our throats, but we can eat all manner of foods from epi-paleo and even neolithic times … so long as we are adapted.

I fully agree, and that summary is all the things I’ve been saying … yes, Arctic folks can enjoy coconut milk and equatorial folks can enjoy whale meat. Coz that’s paleo, right? Far from it! The sneer was fully enjoyed, Niko.

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Just so you know, TD, I have tandoori chicken in the fridge, real TD. We went wine tasting Saturdy with some friends and on the way back, texted Marla & Zahid. Yep, they came over for dinner and amongst the other fare, TD, perfectly marinated, we grilled it, and I have it now still.

Oh, Zahid is Pakistani and Marla Indian. They have 4 boys. My wife was the 5th grade teacher for all of them. Last one just graduated college.

Shit(!) I wrote the following comment on your previous post titled “Fun Shit I Saw in the Last 24 Hours of My Life,” but that was a comment in response to one of your comments. Sorry for the double post, but my response is more relevant to this post in general.

You have a very mature attitude, Richard, and for most, this type of attitude is prevalent at FTA. I first viewed FTA back in November 2008. In fact, it was on Thanksgiving day. What I saw was different interpretations of paleo, ancestral health… choose your language. For some, it seems to mean an X number of carbs per day, while others like myself, are hypersensitive to carbohydrates, even in the form of vegetables, which is why I choose to not eat as many vegetables as, say, Art DeVany, and his wife. Mainly what I saw was a lot of people who felt duped by the government pyramid scheme, thus was made obvious with pissed off attitudes. What was refreshing is, that even though there were, and are different camps of thought about paleo, we all for the most part are independent thinkers, and take what we need in order to fulfill our own individual desires. Never will you see me disparage another individual for eating potatoes, yams, or white rice. If it works for them, then it works for them; simple as that. Who in hell am I to tell another person what to eat in order to claim a piece of group action? By the same token, when others tell me what to eat, or how to exercise in a doctrinaire manner, they will get a monstrous “Fuck You(!) emanating from my bellowing lungs. (And yes, I’m talking about so-called paleo folks, as well as the evangelical vegans, and vegetarians.

Is my view simplistic in thinking? You bet your fifty-two year young ass it is! And there is nothing wrong with that, because it works… for me as well as others.

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Hi Richard. Long time lurker and I never really contribute in the comments, but I want to commend you on this. I thought maybe that you had gone completely bat shit insane over the course of the last few months and I had started to lose interest but now in hindsight it looks like it all lead up to this. An evolved Richard. The new and improved. Still an asshole, but an enlightened one with no more attachments to hold him back. Free to be and choose under nothing elses shadow. Out in the bright sunlight. :)

Cheers!

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“Yes, VLC is, to me, a body hack and it’s very, very far from substantiated that it’s an optimal version of Paleo for most.”

Kurt Harris described LC as therapeutic or something similar a while back, which I find to be an important distinction. Antibiotics are amazingly therapeutic when the body is being overwhelmed by a nasty bacteria, but that doesn’t make it a good idea to take them every day for the rest of your life. What’s the difference between therapeutic and optimal re: safe starches? Well, there’s the rub, but I’m not exactly chomping at the bit for the answer.

Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Is it really all that complicated?

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“Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Is it really all that complicated?”

Let me help:

Eat real food, do real exercise, crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. Use the word cunt at least twice daily in any context that puts you at some degree of social risk, which naturally involves young neo-feminists who are only neo because they don’t care about repeating failed history. Use cocksuker, mutherfucker, pussy, etc. liberally, with little regard to context, unless your’re dealing with a little young male hipsters who’re envious of not having a pussy instead– they might sick their “bear” friends on you. Is it really all that complicated?

Nice. Very nice. You ought to write about that, heavy on anecdotes of how the regurgitated shit you were hearing from fellow kinds and school teachers had no congruence with what you were hearing from your dad.

Does anyone suppose that everyone gathered around the Paleo campfire ate the same proportions of stuff from the day’s haul? Did everyone like to suck the marrow out of the bones, or go straight for the fatty bits on the ends of the ribs? Did they all jump for joy when the tubers were ready and have seconds, or did some take half a potarto and sneak some dried elk they’d been saving from the day before? Yeah, there was probably a general context to our nutrient intake depending on environment, but I don’t suppose people were any less individual in their likes and dislikes, at least in times of plenty. Starvation will likely make you forget you ever heard about “nutritional ketosis”.

” The best you can source of real food, anywhere on the globe and at any time…”

Thank you! We do the best we can, and make “the best we can” a priority, even if it’s not optimal, pure paleo, your message to me personally and as the protector of my family, is, “Try Harder”. It works better than doing nothing, so Thank You! and Fuck your detractors!

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I am up here in Canada,and it’s hard to eat CaliforniaPaleo style like all the pretty people with nice teeth do on their blogs. You were the first guy I read after a friend gave me a copy of wheat belly.
Needless to say ,never felt better,and I enjoy your comments .

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It’s a damn good question Ryan. I have a book in the works already in connection with something completely different, but absolutely, my next book for this audience will be about the social–the religion, the politics, all of it.

Jimmy Moore was useful to you when he was promoting you and vice versa. You disagree with him? Yeah, not so much. I read you for entertainment, not for knowledge. Don’t fall into the Charles Washington I HAVE DISCOVERED THE TRUTH THEREFORE I AM A GURU WHOM ALL MUST OBEY trap (he and Jimmy had some EPIC arguments a few years ago and ended up banning each other from each other’s site). You’re one source, not THE source.

/internet = reading junkie’s China White

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Go fuck off, cunt. You don’t really have a brain or an ounce of honesty, but if you did, you’d know that I have never really gone after anyone in the wider community as others do, and that was longstanding. My foray into Kruse was my one and only departure. A foray I regret.

Oooh, you told me. Should I go away and cry now or just flip you off and call you a thin-skinned “truth hurts” cunt? Decisions, decisions.

And stop with the “I could barely stand you” shit because I haven’t commented here enough for you to make that decision. I didn’t even call you on Jack Kruse because I knew eventually you’d see though his bullshit and the comment I made on your JACK KRUSE IS A BIG EFFING LIAR was about … Jimmy Moore, who has always been a big fucking liar because his livelihood depends on site hits and low-carb frankenfood ad sales. Again, you are A voice, not THE voice.

“Should I go away and cry now or just flip you off and call you a thin-skinned “truth hurts” cunt? Decisions, decisions.”

I don’t should people.

Do whatever the fuck you want, Trish. If you like it here, do what you want. If you hate it here, do what you want. If you want to blow your brains out, I have offered loaded guns for that purpose to two others in my life. In other words, do whatever the fuck you want.

I will do likewise. Do you fuckimg understand? Can I make it any fucking clearer?

Nah, don’t want to blow my brains out. I have it on good authority that it’s hard to scrub that shit off walls, but money can be made if you’re willing to do it.

To quote a meme of a grotesquely made-up Heath Ledger that’s been floating around a few years, not sure if serious. I like your food porn, most times I agree with you about stuff, sometimes I don’t. I just don’t post every time that, as the kids say, you get me in the feels, good or bad.

Although it’s my belief that Jimmy Moore, at least at this stage of the game, is motivated more by the palm of his hand than anything else, he does share a trait that is very common to chronically overweight people–desperation. I haunt a fairly conventional low carb board, and any time there’s a tweak–eat more fat! Have coconut milk! Use HCG! Eat low calorie one day and high calorie the next! Fast! Just eat meat and eggs!–the bandwagon gets jumped on so hard it bounces, people hoping that this is the ONE THING that will get them thin once and for all. With Jimmy right now it’s “nutritional ketosis,” but he boasts that he can still eat chocolate, which is reminiscent of an alcoholic boasting “hey, one beer won’t hurt!”

I’m sure you have something important to say, but I’ll be damn if I can figure out what it is most of the time. Maybe that’s intentional. Since I only read your ravings on rare occasions, I don’t have all the context needed to grok your beef with Jimmy Moore (among other things). Yeah, he’s got seriously damaged physiology, so he emphasizes LC and ketosis, Certainly JM, Richard Bernstein, Andreas Eenfeldt, and Steve Phinney will die any day from a massive starch and sourdough deficiency. Where’s the big tent that includes everyone who’s attempting to eat real food? Not everyone would survive in Kitava. Me included.

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“PALEO is a framework, a principle. It’s a set of ideas, rules, guidelines…a foundation…by which you… By which you… Now… get this because I’m only going to write it this one time: Paleo is a DEFENSE. It is not, nor has it ever been anything more than that. It’s not an offense. It’s not a diet. It’s not a prescription. It’s not low carb. It’s not high carb. It’s not a club (in any sense). It’s a foundation.”

A-fuckin-men!

People want to be spoonfed. That’s a huge problem. They want to go to Sisson’s site or someone else’s and be told exactly what to eat and when to eat it. Is this or that safe? etc, etc.. Instead of just taking their own lives–into their own hands–and figuring out what works for them after they’ve established a working template. It’s really that simple.

I’ve said it before, but I hate all the coined phrases for a REAL FOOD lifestyle. I know it’s a necessary evil, but it’s so confining to label it anything other than real food.

What really gets me about that whole scene is the idea that you only get to eat carbs if you are a competitive athlete.

Hey I’m sorry that I got old, I’m sorry that I gained 60 pounds of excess weight in middle age (which I lost), I’m sorry that despite four years of constant, unrelenting effort I cannot be a competitive athlete, I’m sorry that I am slow as molasses compared to my younger self, I’m sorry that I pushed myself so hard for so long that something had to give, but please, pretty please, can I eat some rice?

Or some gruel? Even Charles Dickens gave his waifs some gruel.
,
I think Moore has a good message when you are obese as all get out, but at some point it ceases to be the right message.

Do you see it as a journey

A>B

Or do you see it as a journey

A>B>C>D>E>F

At some point you have to take stock and decide what you are going to do with the rest of your life.

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I suspect that for most moderate cycling of carbs via white rice & starchy veg will be like metabolic exercise.

Perhaps vl or zero is right or optimal or even preferable for some, but I think they are a very tiny minority in the large scope of things.

I also think the problem is this very weird (to me) notion that you have to have some daily macro ratio. That ought to be laughed away right off the bat. Some days you eat zero carbs, some high carbs, some in between.

I have one rule. I eat real food. Nothing from a can, box, or package. I feel great. I don’t count carbs or any of that crazy shit. I generally avoid wheat most of the time. On Sunday I did indulge though. In San Diego there is a bakery called Bread & Cie. They make a baguette that is out of this world. I ate half a loaf with generous gobs of Kerry Gold Irish butter and 3 glasses of cabernet. I don’t eat this every day or even once a week, only sometimes. Life is short, enjoy it and be happy!

The pic actually has a more of a dried ham, like prosciutto. The classic is jambon Blanche, which is a cooked ham, but not cured or smoked. Some delis have it and in fact, there is a Canadian company that makes it under the trade name jambon, I believe. It is very different from smoked or cured ham and goes so excellent with unsalted butter.

Just want to to say that I completely respect where you are coming from. I think you got it DEAD ON in this post. I guess I’m just so confused. Why is it that people read something from some guru on the internet and think that it somehow becomes part of some doctrine or dogma before they’ve even ATTEMPTED to impliment it into their lives. You will find folks that will fight you to the death over low carb being the only true and righteous path even though they’ve never seen a bodyfat percentage lower than 20%. Yes, folks that are “metabolically deranged” would benefit from cutting the carbs, but you know what else they would benefit from? Not eating shit. Eat real, whole foods. Get your ass moving and pick up heavy shit on a frequent basis. “Your carbs aren’t low enough” is always the right answer. I love the line “Paleo is a framework, a principle” because it is spot on. No one is right or wrong, and yet everybody is. We have to be smart enough to take what we gather online and put it into practice in our lives. Keep what works, scrap what doesn’t. And I will sure as shit not leave my fate in the hands of someone who has never nor will ever meet me.

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For me, an important step was realizing that I don’t eat “at dinner time” any more. I eat when I am hungry, and then I eat whatever I can find (having done my homework so that my hunt minimizes poisons in my environment). This was the lesson that fasting taught me (and continues to teach: I think by this point it may even have resulted in more quantifiable impact on my phenotype than even giving up wheat).

Joseph, as I was walking the dogs this morning when that post was about 90% done I was wondering how to go forward and one thing that hit me, that I’ve always used myself, is that in any situation, be it a party, traveling, whatever, where your choices are limited to a menu, always remember that a fast is one of your choices. Or, maybe you have been fasting, or you’re just plain hungry, or you’re ready for an indulgence. Then you just make a choice, hopefully not the worst one and hopefully, a decent one even if not the best you could do at that particular moment.

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I'm Richard Nikoley. Free the Animal began in 2003 and as of 2018, contains over 4,600 posts and 110,000 comments from readers. I cover a lot of ground, blogging what I wish...from health, diet, and lifestyle to philosophy, politics, social issues, and cryptocurrency. I celebrate the audacity and hubris to live by your own exclusive authority and take your own chances in life. [Read more...]

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